Family
by Kuroi-cho-tsuki-shiro
Summary: A proposal of marriage, a glimpse of the future and shadows from the past. Without realising it, Byakuya will ask Hisana for the one thing she cannot give him. Byakuya x Hisana 54
1. Chapter 1

_**Author's Note: A story of Hisana and Byakuya. Special thanks to everyone following the tale and honorary mentions to reviewers….. OMG, Chelly, you're still here! Thank you! Your review made me immeasurably happy. ^^ Thank you also to Icyangel, Splitheart, Kaze, Sky1011 (hello there) and Ashes2ashes. And also to the anonymous reviewer. I hope it is romantic enough for you. :D**_

_**Hisana has been staying in Byakuya's house for a little under a year….. (If you like this story, please check my profile for others in the sequence).**_

She returned to the mansion a little after nightfall. The search had been fruitless.

As soon as she had entered Rukongai, she had traded one of her fine dresses for something made of sack-cloth and hemp. It had not been so hard to blend back in after that.

She had thought she might feel some nostalgia for the dusty streets, festooned with lost and hopeless-looking souls, but, instead, she found herself glad that she no longer had to stay here, that she could return to a warm bed. His bed, she realised. How quickly she had come to rely on Byakuya's world, and how completely he filled her thoughts. It was only Rukia's presence, in a corner of her mind, that gnawed at that happiness, tainting his kindness, staining her memories of the night before.

Nearly a hundred years ago, she had left the little girl on somebody's doorstep. She found the alley again. The houses on one side had been torn down and ragged men and women were picking their way through the rubble. The doorway itself was crumbling, but she sat down on the step nonetheless, just as she had done a century before.

All these years wanting to believe she'd done the best she could. A child herself, she'd not been fit to raise another. The girl had surely had a fighting chance of survival, and better here than being hauled around by a sister who couldn't take care of her.

Hisana put her head in her hands. Who the hell was she kidding?

She'd wanted rid of the child. No matter how she justified it, though justify it she must for the sake of her sanity, the overriding truth was that she'd grown to despise the screaming, howling thing. It hadn' t been her sister, just something unwanted and resented.

Hisana looked up as a bunch of children ran fleet-footed down the street.

How old would she be now? If she had strong _reiatsu, _and Hisana had good reason to suspect she did, then Rukia might appear to be in her early teens by now. Would she know why she aged slowly? Why she hungered?

"If I'd known, I could have told you. I could have taught you," she said aloud. Because that was what big sisters did. They didn't leave you behind.

This was Rukongai. Could a child really have survived alone?

She wandered the streets of Inuzuri until sundown and, though she eventually found the courage to ask, no-one knew the name 'Rukia;' no-one recalled an abandoned infant. Most people couldn't even remember that there had been a row of houses standing on the other side of the street.

And so she returned to the mansion after dark, still dressed in the sack-cloth garment she'd bartered her good clothes for.

She stood in the garden and listened to the sounds of a heated argument. She'd never seen Byakuya angry. She couldn't hear what he was saying, but the bitterness in his voice made it difficult for her to move from the spot. She stood on the lawn, just outside one of the main rooms in which torches were lit. Through the paper screens, she could see figures. The nearest was Byakuya. He walked the length of the room, turned and paced back again, keeping up a constant flow of low, angry words. The other would answer gruffly or issue something like a barked challenge, to which Byakuya responded with greater venom.

As the argument reached a fever pitch, Byakuya turned and tore back the paper door:

"Do it then! Do whatever you see fit!" he told the other, and snapped it shut behind him with enough force that the frame shuddered. He hadn't yet seen her. A few paces down the decking, he ripped open the door to his own apartments. Hisana ran to reach him before he could slam it in her face, and he looked down in surprise, letting her duck under his arm to get into the room: "Where have you been?" As coarse as the question sounded, he didn't seem to expect an answer. He strode to the end of the corridor, stopped, and paced back.

Hisana pressed herself back against one of the walls, her head down, her hands over her belly. Her mind was filled with the streets of her childhood and with the empty eyes of the hundred or more people she had stopped and asked for help. She had no intention of letting him know what she had been through, but she did need him here. Now. Attentive. Aware.

He stormed past her: "My grandfather is foolish! He sees only what he wants to see, and then he tells me that I am blind! Me! He thinks this is a selfish whim on my part, as if I'm the one who's spitting on my parents graves! My father loved my mother. What does he know! And, anyway, it's nothing to do with them or with him! How can laws govern something like that? How can laws tell me who I'm to marry? I am the head of this household and if he wishes to leave then that is his decision. He has nowhere to go. He will come to respect my choices or he will not be a part of this family!" In all the noise and staccato of his words, Hisana had heard only one:

"Marry" –

He turned to look at her, his face unreadable:

"You've been under my roof for nearly a year now."

"Well, I don't think that means that we have to!" she cried, not entirely sure of what she was arguing for. As she raised her voice though, a greater part of the certainty drained from his features:

"Have to – No – I didn't mean" –

"Were you planning on consulting me?"

"I was going to ask" -

"Asking might be a place to start! Or should I hear it from him? Maybe we could wait until I'm in front of the priest. Or years from now, you could just tell me we've been married for a century and I never noticed. We could do it that way!"

He stared, caught entirely off guard by her anger, and, after a moment, walked past her, untied his sword from his belt and laid it on a table. She watched the number six rise and fall on his back with every breath. He had never intended to mention marriage, she thought. Now, he was furious with himself for having spoken out of turn. She knew he didn't carry emotions well. They came and went like squalls in a storm. More tentatively, she said: "Ask me, Byakuya-_sama_."

"Not like this," he said.

"How then?"

"Another way. I'd planned it. It was going to be - good." He turned back to her, his face calm and unreadable once again. And then he approached her, took her hands in both his own and spoke with such sincerity: "Hisana, I've never known anybody like you and I need to ask" – Something caught his eye. He frowned suddenly: "Where did you find that dress? That is very ugly!"

"That's your question?" she cried.

His face fell as he realised what he had said and so exquisite was his crestfallen expression that it caused a tremor of laughter to bubble up in Hisana's throat. She smothered it with both hands, but still, after a moment's gasping, she began to giggle uncontrollably. He watched her for a time. Then asked:

"Are you happy?" She snorted with laughter and folded up against the wall. "You're still laughing."

"Try it again," she said through tears.

"No. Now you're laughing at me."

She was. And she did, for a time, while he watched her as if she were a stranger who had entered his home. Eventually, he turned away. She went after and caught his hand:

"Kuchiki Byakuya, marry me!"

"No."

"Marry me!"

"No."

"Nothing makes any sense to me unless I'm with you and you're the only thing in the world that makes me smile." He stopped. He was staring straight ahead:

"And laugh."

"Yes."

He looked down at her hand curled into his:

"Then you may ask me one more time."

"Kuchiki Byakuya," she said, and her voice softened as he took her other hand: "Would you do me the great honour of marrying me?"

He picked her up, so that, when he kissed her, she was looking down into his eyes. They seemed old in so ageless a face. Calm waters on the surface of a rolling ocean.


	2. Chapter 2

Looking back, she would come to realise that he never said yes. Assent had become unnecessary in the face of an inevitable tide. But they resigned themselves willingly. Both, in their own ways, had become accustomed to a lifetime of fighting. Giving in, then, was as close as either could ever hope to come to peace.

For a time, Hisana's happiness eclipsed all else, holding at bay her compulsion to resume searching Rukongai. Kaien Shiba, despite his arrogance, had apparently held his tongue on the matter and Byakuya was blissfully unaware. The little girl was dead, Hisana told herself. She would,in time, come to believe her own lies so long as she repeated them often enough. With her future, stretching out before her, filled with innumerable possibilities, what need had she to relive her memories? In refusing to lay them to rest, she hurt no-one but herself.

Yet she dreamed of her sometimes.

When she did, Hisana found herself filled with the certainty that the child lived; that if she just visited Inuzuri today, then she might catch sight of her, pass her in a street. One word might be enough. She wouldn't have to admit they were sisters or even that she had been searching. She just wanted to know who she was. The sound of her voice. The colour of her eyes. To see if her features were soft like her own or hardened by the things she had seen. If she knew those things, Hisana thought, she would sleep peacefully.

She started visiting Rukongai in the weeks leading up to her marriage. Every day that she could, she went: to Inuzuri in Seventy-eighth; to Seventy-ninth; even Eightieth. Not caring what she risked.

Something that had begun as a guilty secret evolved into an elaborate deception. She could afford to give less and less of herself to Byakuya. Each day, when he left the house, she would change into ragged clothes and wrap a scarf around her hair. She would leave through the gates of the _sereitei _and spend the day walking hopelessly through dusty, crowded streets. There was never a face she recognised; never a flash of blue eyes beneath a shock of black hair, or the piercing gaze of a girl she'd seen in her dreams. When she returned home, she would change back into the clothes Byakuya had bought her, and he came home each day to an obedient and demure companion. To a willing lover. To a woman who, at first glance, tried to give him everything, but, while every word on her lips was a lie, the only time she was truly at peace was while he slept at her side, his body pale in the moonlight. At such times, he seemed so beautiful to her that his presence was a phantasm she had started to believe. Yet it would not be real, it would not be solid, until she could cast off this one remnant of her earthly life, and bury her sister once and for all.


	3. Chapter 3

It was nearly spring. The wedding was to take place in two days time.

Byakuya's grandfather had returned to the house. The two of them had come to some understanding. He would attend the ceremony, Byakuya had told her, and would bless the union. She wanted to look forward to it, like any bride; she wanted to be nervous, to have doubts, to worry. Yet, when she tried to imagine it, there was only an absence of anticipation. Because it would change nothing. It would not bring Rukia back. It would not allay her conscience. She would go on lying and the hours spent in the ceremony would be hours lost from Rukongai.

She was changing out of her nightclothes when the door to the bedroom she now shared with Byakuya slid back and he stood there. She had assumed he had already left for the barracks. A few minutes more and she would have put on the dull hemp kimono she always wore into Rukongai. Luckily, she had only got as far as pulling on a _juban. _Byakuya, for his own part, was not dressed in uniform, but, instead, wore a pale green kimono with a white _obi. _There was an elaborate gold chain at his throat. It was something she could not get used too: that he dressed this way when there was no formal occasion to attend, while she felt more comfortable in the sack-cloth and hemp than ever she did in his fine silks.

"Are you going out?" he asked.

"It's a fine day and the plum trees are in blossom. It would be a shame to miss them," she lied, hoping that he might leave.

"I thought we could do something together."

"Don't you have to report in?"

"I'm off duty."

"Oh." Her heart sunk: "For how long?"

"At least until after the wedding. What would you like to do? If you want to see the blossoms, we could walk down to the shrine."

"Yes," she said: "Of course. That would be nice."


	4. Chapter 4

A bright winter's morning. A man and a woman walking hand in hand beneath the plum blossoms, harbingers of the spring.

Byakuya held her hand tightly. It had been a long winter and Hisana welcomed the return of warmer weather. Ever since the fire, which seemed to her a lifetime ago, she would wake, on cold mornings, with a tightness in her chest and a cough that had grown worse over these past few months. It usually wore off as the day progressed and, on milder mornings, like this one, she could almost forget the scars of her old life. All but one.

Byakuya had stopped at the entrance to a shrine partially hidden amongst the trees. She had almost walked on but hesitated at his tug on her hand:

"This belongs to my family. My mother was buried here."

She stood obediently, repectfully. Even in these things she was deceiving him. She didn't want to be here. "Hisana, can I ask you something?" he said suddenly.

"Of course."

"Are you happy?"

"Of course I am happy!"

"And yet, sometimes" – he searched for words – "Sometimes it's as if you're far away, Hisana."

"I'm sorry. I think, sometimes, I'm so happy that I'm ashamed."

"Of what?"

"Byakuya, I'm not unique; I'm not special. But you brought me here. I can't help but think there were others like me in Rukongai, and they will never come here and they will never know this."

"No," he said with certainty: "There are no others like you."

"But there are, Byakuya-_sama. _There are others more deserving." He put his arm around her waist and pulled her to his side:

"Are you asking me to rescue every stray cat? I told you before: I am selfish. I chose you." He stood a while longer, staring at the shrine, then said: "There was a law against our marriage. My grandfather appealed to the Central Forty-six and they agreed to make an exception in our case."

She stared:

"I didn't know he did that for us."

"Without him, they might have prevented us; even punished us."

"But he didn't want me to be any part of this family. What made him change his mind?"

Byakuya glanced down at her. She thought she saw traces of a smile on his lips, but she couldn't be sure:

"I told him that unless I married you then I would never marry anyone. He's very keen on my marrying you see." They began walking again: "Some traditions die harder than others. One is that the bloodline continues and that, for him at least, is more important than the woman I choose as my wife."

"The bloodline? You're" – Hisana's steps faltered – "Are you talking about children?"

"He's been afraid, ever since my father died, that the family line would end with me." Now he was smiling, right up until the moment when he caught a glimpse of her expression. She dropped her head, letting hair fall across her face. "Hisana?"

"You surprised me; that's all," she said breathily.

"I just thought" – he broke off as she extricated herself from his arms and began to walk away from him: sharp, jagged steps. "Hisana!"

There were certain levels of deception she could not stomach and one of them was to play at being a family. She could imagine it: the two of them together in a summertime garden. A paradise idyll. A baby in her arms. The empty house growing full again with promises for the future. But the child was the little girl from eighty years ago, and the fine linen blankets Hisana was holding were rags. She could still feel the baby squirming and crying in her arms. Her cheeks were suddenly wet. "Hisana!" he cried: "Whatever I've said" -

"No, you've said nothing unkind." She turned back. She could steel her features, but she couldn't hide the tears, though she tried to pretend they meant nothing: "Let's go home now."

"Why are you crying?"

"You made me happy." He stared hard at her:

"No, I didn't."

"It's fine. Really."

"Why are you lying to me?"

The smile fell away from her features and she stood there, feeling strangely naked. His eyes bore into her; a thousand and one questions. His frown was cold, but, as tears began to gather and sting her cheeks again, he reached forward suddenly and drew her into a tight embrace.

That was so much worse. If he could simply have been angry, she might have forgiven him, but to offer her comfort and acceptance when, with her every breath, she lied; that was more than she could stand.

She broke down.

How long they stood there, she didn't know, and she hoped that nobody passed them because it would not do to be seen so. She had hooked her fingers into the collar of his kimono and was holding on so tight that her knuckles were white. Her head hung against his chest:

"I can't marry you, Byakuya-_sama." _

She said it so softly that he had to ask her to repeat herself, and, when she did, she felt him stiffen. Loosing her fingers from his robe was one of the hardest things she'd ever had to do. She looked up into his face and, just once, was glad that she couldn't see what he was thinking: "I'm so sorry. I can't."

A sudden gust of wind raked through the plum blossoms causing them to cascade like snow. As they fell between the man and the woman who had walked hand in hand to this spot, the couple broke apart and she ran from him. Her footfalls were soft, her passage light, leaving no prints on the ancient path.


	5. Chapter 5

It was dark before he summoned her.

She didn't know what, if anything, she should read into that. She had half-expected him to come looking for her as soon as he got home and she'd made no plans as to what she would say. She didn't even know where she was going to go, but she couldn't stay. Of that, at least, she was sure.

In the end, he sent a servant. That too felt strange, but at least it meant that he had taken her seriously; he wasn't going to plead.

"Kuchiki-_taichou _requests your presence in the audience chamber," the man said, bowed and left.

It was with some trepidation that she entered the main hall of the mansion. It was a long, low building. Yet another empty space in a house full of absences. When she did though, she was surprised by the scene before her. Byakuya was standing to one side, his figure somehow more diminutive than it had been. His face was very pale. She guessed that he had been arguing.

There were two chairs set facing one another in the centre of the room and, in one of these, his grandfather sat, leaning heavily on a staff though she was certain she'd never seen him use one. His eyes flickered towards her from beneath his shaggy brows as she entered:

"Hisana-_san, _please take a seat." He gestured. She sat down and folded her hands in her lap. She had to weather this, one way or another. "I am a patient man," he told her: "And though you may think me callous, I care deeply for the well-being of my grandson. I was not initially inclined towards your union, but, at his request, I have turned a blind eye towards its obvious disadvantages. I have gone so far as to use the weight which my position, as a member of this clan gives me, to ensure that your match is approved by the authorities. In two days time, you will wed my grandson."

"I can't" –

He raised a hand:

"I did not give you permission to speak. You will be obedient and respectful, as befits someone who has been granted an opportunity so far above their station. You will be grateful" –

"_Sensei." _Byakuya stopped him and he glanced up, irritably:

"She should know, Byakuya-_kun."_

"I am not ungrateful," she said quietly.

"This is about family, isn't it?" Byakuya said, stepping forward. She had hoped he would be angry with her. Instead, he just looked confused: "Since we've been together, you've been cold with me only once, when I asked about your human family."

"Are you unable to bare children?" asked the old man bluntly.

"_Sensei!"_

Hisana felt her skin prickle under their joint gaze:

"I don't want a child," she said. She looked up at Byakuya: "But you do."

"Nonsense!" said his grandfather: "There's not one soul in Rukongai that doesn't yearn for the family it's lost." Before Byakuya could interrupt again, he spoke sharply: "You know nothing of human souls, Bya-_kun, _so don't presume to correct me. The people of Rukongai band together just as if they were families. Children find parents. Brothers adopt sisters. They play games of make-believe so they don't have to think about what they've lost. Am I wrong?"

"No, Sir," Hisana answered.

"Then what makes you so different?"

Byakuya spoke for her:

"She doesn't want a child, _Sensei."_

"So she is selfish."

"That's not it." Hisana looked up, but, when she spoke, it was to Byakuya: "I can't marry you because I'm not the person you think I am. I've lied to you. Many times." He stared at her, nonplussed, and she looked down, digging her nails into the back of her hand. Where should she begin? How much did she want to tell him? Now, at a time when she was bout to walk out of his life? Just the bare essentials. Just the things that would make it easier for him to let her go. "Byakuya-_sama, _I've visited Rukongai every day for these last three weeks. I went back to Seventy-ninth" –

"She already has a lover in Rukongai," said the old man. Byakuya's face blanched:

"No, she doesn't." He looked back at her: "You don't."

In that instant, she thought her heart broke. She might have had him believe that very lie were it not that he had turned to defend her without hesitation.

"I don't," she said.

"Why then, Hisana?"

"You rescued a girl from Rukongai; that's what you think. I know what you see when you look at me; she was helpless and kind and scared. But you never rescued me, Byakuya; everything I am is still back there. Whoever you rescued, she doesn't exist!" – She covered her face with her hands. They were trembling, but Byakuya took them in his own, forcing her to look at him:

"Hisana, this is a nonsense."

"I wanted so much to be that girl!"

"You are. You are no different from the day I met you."

"When you met me? I'd already ruined everything by then. I killed her, Byakuya, or worse; maybe she's alive and she's in pain" –

"Who? Who, Hisana?"

"My sister," she said in a whisper: "A baby. Just a baby. I hated her so much that I left her behind. How can you love someone who can hate that much?" she asked as he brushed the hair out of her eyes: "You deserve to have a wife and a child and I – I couldn't take care of a child! Look at what I did!"

"This is different. This would be our family."

"I had a family!" she cried: "Don't you get it? I had it and I destroyed it. She'd dead because of me" –

"No. You don't believe that," he said, his voice so assured that it stopped her in her tracks: "You believe she's still alive. Otherwise, why do you go to Rukongai?"

She took a deep breath. There were questions she had never wanted to ask, but she had gone too far to turn back now. And she had to know:

"Is it possible?" She looked up at him, eyes pleading: "I left her in a doorway. I thought somebody could pick her up, take her in.

"It's possible," said the old man behind Byakuya. His grandson moved aside to let him speak: "A child, you say, in Seventy-ninth?"

"It was in Seventy-eighth. I could show you the place."

"Hm. Life expectancy there is low, even for adults, but it's not impossible."

"How old was she?" asked Byakuya.

"Four months when she died in the human world. Six months when I left her."

Byakuya looked at his grandfather:

"Could we find her?"

"I don't see why not. If not her then, at very least, the cause and manner of her death."

Hisana reeled:

"What?" She stared uncomprehendingly at the man before her, the man who wanted to be her husband: "Find her? You can find her?"

"Isn't that what you want?" he asked desperately, looking as if he expected her to say no and demand something even more obscure.

"Yes! But how?"

"Hisana, the _shinigami _keep meticulous records of every soul that enters and leaves Rukongai, whether they die here of violence or disease, or live out their life to be reborn on earth. We keep the balance. All we need to do is cross-reference her name with the records."

"What?"

"Given the paperwork, the regulations and controls, it might be a few months before we have an answer, but she'll be there." He wiped the tears from her face with his thumb: "Just as you were."

She stared at him for a long time. Then she burst into tears.

Tentatively, Byakuya put his arms around her, as if afraid that the smallest sign of affection on his part might spark off another inexplicable chain of events. When she returned the embrace, he relaxed a little and his grandfather shook his head:

"You could have had your pick of women, Bya-_kun. _I swear you go out of your way to trouble me with your choices." He rose to his feet and, with a snort of disapproval, bid them good night.

Byakuya remained, kneeling on the floor with his arms about her shoulders. After a long time, he said:

"You have to stop crying now, Hisana." She brushed at her eyes. "I wish you had told me," he said: "I wish you hadn't kept it to yourself; not least because you put yourself in danger."

"I'm sorry, Byakuya-_sama."_

"So," he said, straightening and pulling her to her feet as he did so: "Tomorrrow you will give your sister's details to one of my men."

"Thank you," she whispered.

"There's no need. You're my wife, my family and, as such, she is as much my sister as yours."

Hisana's steps faltered:

"I'm going to be your wife."

"In two days time."

Her mouth opened in a small 'o:'

"I'm going to be married, Byakuya-_sama!"_

"Yes. Yes, you are." He chuckled and then reached down, cupped her face and kissed her: "I'm glad you've come back to me in time for that."

"But I never went anywhere."

"I think you did."

She didn't know how to answer, but she followed him out into a mild evening and he took her hand.

"What happens after we are married_?"_

"Then we have the rest of our lives together," he said: "And it's a little harder for you to run away." She turned and saw that he was smiling in the moonlight:

"Don't tease me, Byakuya-_sama!"_

"I wouldn't dare!" She bristled and, at this, he gave a theatrical sigh: "My grandfather was right; I did not choose the easy path." He swept past her, the sleeves of his gown brushing her cheek. She stood, trying to appear affronted.

The wind had changed. It tore white blossoms from the trees and they drifted down over the night-time scene. She saw him glance back once, to be sure that she would follow, and she smiled inwardly. She did not deserve this: him, or his forgiveness, or his love. But she did want it.

In that respect at least she was still only human.


	6. Chapter 6

**To everyone who has faved and watched this story. THANK YOU!**

**The next part of this story is called OUTSIDE THE BALANCE and it will appear in a separate installment, which I will upload now. If you can't find it, look on my profile page. THE LINKS TO ALL THE STORIES ARE BACK! THEY'RE BACK! I'M SO HAPPEEEEE! Anyway...**

**THANKS TO Shadewolf7, Truantpony, ForbiddenME, Pinky357, Immortal Vows, Chellythemadhatter, Insomniatic95, Sallythedestroyerofworlds23, UNTensaZangetsu, XDark FangsX, Superlynx, Ichigoforeverlove, Ennaalemap, Makaykay15, Kaze05, Splash into Forever, War90, Yellowwomanonthebrink, Bakane, Night Flower, Hallmarktrinity, Tiffany Park, Snowcrystals, Neristhaed, Splitheart1120, VanillaTwilight4, Nightfur, Happykiller93, Haildance, Ani-mimi, Mysticalphoenix-avalon, Jennyrdr, Goranr, Firebirdever, Isleofsolitude, Itachipanda, Pamila de Castro, Lemgem, Nightingale Heartz, Ashes2ashes121, Icyangel27, Westhardobbs, Devdhftf, Computer-Rukia-Addicted, Thayet9, EcalSol019, WriteFF13, Sky1011, Xwannaflyx, MidnightVampire18, Pen-aine, ShadowPain and Tazski.**


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